Director of Programmes

 
About Global Schools Forum  
 
Global Schools Forum (GSF) connects and strengthens a global community of over 200 non-state education organisations across 70+ countries. Since 2017, we have become a leading accelerator for locally-led education innovation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, supporting non-state education organisations to innovate, deepen impact, and achieve scale. 
We work as a global learning community, innovation accelerator, and partnership builder. We connect local leadership, share knowledge and insights, incubate and diffuse promising education solutions, and engage in policy-shaping dialogue to strengthen education systems. Our community collectively reaches 135 million children, and our Labs  and Impact Accelerator programmes have supported innovations that now reach an additional one million children with better quality education and care. 
We are at an inflection point in our journey, having grown five-fold over the last five years. Our 2025–28 strategy marks an ambitious next chapter, with a renewed focus on community, knowledge, funding, and partnerships, and a deepening commitment to early years, foundational learning, secondary education, and leveraging technology. Our vision remains that all children realise their potential through safe access to quality education. 
GSF holds a role no other organisation in this sector plays: we are the connective tissue for organisations across low- and middle-income countries who are wrestling with the same hard problems, often without knowing who else is wrestling with them too. Our programmes turn that connective tissue into shared progress on some of education’s biggest challenges: 

• Ensuring every child gains strong foundations in literacy and numeracy.
• Scaling access to high-quality early years care and education.
• Ensuring meaningful transitions into secondary education and into employment. Three cross-cutting themes run through all of this work: learning differences, innovative financing, and artificial intelligence (AI) in education. Rather than standalone areas, they are lenses that shape how programmes are designed and delivered across foundational learning, early years, and secondary education and employment pathways: making sure children who learn differently are identified early and supported to learn, developing financing models that reward improved learning outcomes, and harnessing AI and technology to drive learning. GSF’s dedicated work on these themes currently sits within the foundational learning portfolio.
Join us at a moment of real momentum. We are positioned for additional significant growth, and the impact of this role will be felt in the quality and reach of our programmes portfolio, and in how well GSF’s largest team is set up to deliver it.  We are a small, fully-remote global team with colleagues based in the UK and across Africa and Asia, reflecting the communities in which we work. We welcome applicants for this role from the UK, where we are headquartered, and the global south where we operate, with a preference for candidates within a time zone of GMT-2 to GMT+5:30.  
 
Role Purpose 
 
This is a rare opportunity to shape how GSF’s programmes are delivered, and how well our largest team is set up to deliver them.  As Director of Programmes, you will sit on our Senior Management Team (SMT) and take strategic ownership of the portfolio that sits at the heart of GSF’s work. 

• Programmes sit at the heart of this role. You will oversee our portfolios in foundational learning, early years, and secondary education and employment pathways, working closely with the Associate Directors so they deliver high impact for children and for the organisations we support.
• Alongside this, you will lead GSF’s largest team, putting in place the processes we need to allocate people well, learn across projects, and keep raising our operational bar. 

This is not a traditional programme management role. GSF’s programmes are tightly integrated with our community: the organisations we support are also members of the GSF community, and our programmes are only valuable when they are fully informed by members’ needs. What we learn together then informs collective action beyond our community: changing practice in classrooms and influencing government policy and funder strategy across the wider education ecosystem. You will be expected to hold that link deliberately, ensuring that we maintain trust with GSF’s community, that programme design is shaped by what we hear from our community, and that what we learn through delivery is shared back and drives meaningful change in practices in the classrooms and at the systems level. You are more than an excellent programme leader: you are purpose-driven. You bring genuine curiosity about how programmes translate into real change for children and collective action to move the sector, and you see yourself as building the systems and the team that let GSF deliver impactful programmes at scale, not just overseeing delivery. How you’ll create impact
• Programme judgement: you know where GSF’s programmatic effort will create the most impact for children, and you can prioritise a broad portfolio accordingly.
• Operational rigour: you turn learning from across projects into simple, practical systems that make delivery better, not just busier.
• People leadership: you build and support GSF’s largest team, giving people clarity,direction, and room to do their best work
 
Portfolio overview 
Our programmes portfolio is organised across three areas: foundational learning, early years (childcare and ECED), and a growing body of work in secondary education and employment pathways. Community strategy and engagement is owned across the senior management team and implemented by each member of the GSF team in a matrixed and collaborative way.
Foundational learning
Our foundational learning portfolio focuses on foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN): the systems and innovations needed to ensure all children can read with meaning, write, and perform basic mathematical calculations. This includes a growing body of work supporting organisations to strengthen their foundational learning programmes, with an increased focus on improving literacy outcomes. Across the portfolio, the work combines direct and high-impact support to education organisations with effective diffusion of practices and evidence-based advocacy with system stakeholders that can influence the broader sector.   
Early years
Our early years portfolio, spanning childcare and early childhood education and development (ECED), has a similar focus to the FLN portfolio and includes a wide range of programmes for organisational support, evidence generation, and ecosystem influence. Examples include the Impact at Scale Labs and our Early Childhood in Emergencies Evidence Hub. The team is connecting practitioner insights with the broader evidence base, and bringing these messages into conversations with government, funders, and global policymakers.
Secondary education and employment pathways
Secondary education is a newer and growing body of work, building on our foundational learning expertise to support locally-led organisations as children move into secondary school and from secondary education into employment, with several opportunities in the pipeline that would significantly scale the work.
Community
GSF’s community connects and supports our network of over 230 non-state education organisations across 70+ countries. Our community engagement strategy is shaped by the Senior Management Team (SMT), and its implementation is shared between two verticals, Programmes and External Affairs, each responsible for different parts of the strategy and drawing on time allocations from colleagues across the organisation. In this role, you will lead the Programmes vertical’s part of that implementation, working closely with External Affairs to drive growth, engagement, and the diffusion of promising practices. This takes sustained, dedicated time: you will engage regularly with senior leaders across member organisations, stay on top of their priorities, and convene community-focused events, including alongside major external conferences, to spread what works.
Key responsibilities Programme leadership and delivery (40%)

• Portfolio ownership: oversee the design, delivery, and quality of GSF’s programmes portfolio, spanning foundational learning, early years, and a growing body of work in secondary education and employment pathways.
• Technical collaboration: work with the Associate Directors across each portfolio area, including Foundational Learning and Early Years, to ensure delivery is high- quality, evidence-based, and delivers real impact for children and for the organisations we support.
• Programme quality: establish and maintain clear standards for programme design, implementation, monitoring, and learning across all workstreams.

 Operational excellence (25%)

• Continuous improvement: identify opportunities to improve operational delivery across the portfolio, from planning and budgeting cycles through to reporting.
• Cross-project learning and knowledge management: facilitate and oversee the documentation of learning across projects, connecting the dots across programmes so that good practice travels rather than staying siloed.
  Standard operating procedures: create and implement the standard operating procedures that keep delivery consistent, well-governed, and efficient.

Team leadership (20%)

• Team management: manage GSF’s largest team, giving people clarity, direction, and room to do their best work.
  Mentoring and growth: mentor and develop the team, especially the Associate Directors, creating clear growth pathways and providing thought leadership that strengthens the team’s technical and strategic capability.
• Resourcing: put in place, and own, the processes for allocating team members across projects, so the right expertise lands on the right work at the right time.
  Cross-functional deployment: work with functional leads across labs design, operations, technology, and evidence to make sure specialist expertise is well-deployed across the portfolio.

Organisational leadership (15%)

• Community strategy: lead the Programmes vertical’s part in implementing GSF’s community engagement strategy, as shaped by the SMT, working closely with External Affairs and drawing on time allocations from colleagues across the organisation, so that trust earned through our community work translates into shared momentum behind education’s biggest challenges.
• Community engagement: dedicate sustained time to building relationships with senior leaders across the GSF community, staying close to their priorities, and representing GSF at community-focused events, including at major external conferences.
• Diffusion and replication: champion two-way diffusion as standard practice, making sure community insight shapes how programmes are designed, and that what we learn through delivery reaches members and the sector in accessible,useful form.
• Senior management: participate in the SMT, contributing to organisational strategy and decision-making beyond the programmes portfolio.
• Funder relationships and fundraising: build and manage relationships with key funders, and lead fundraising and proposal development for major programmatic initiatives, working closely with the CEO and SMT, and drawing on the broader Programmes team.

Person specification
We’re looking for someone who combines strong programme leadership with operational rigour: someone who brings energy, warmth, and strategic judgement to everything they do. Essential

• Significant senior experience leading education programmes at scale, with deep understanding of education program implementation in low- and middle- income countries and of the challenges and opportunities facing locally-led education organisations.
• Sound understanding and passion for building trust with a community of partner organisations to inform programmes and ensure that promising practices spread and get adopted elsewhere. Ability to engage with practitioners, as well as governments and funders to create collective movements that change practices in the sector.
• Strong commitment to locally-led approaches and to genuine partnership with the organisations GSF supports, listening carefully, responding to need, and avoiding the imposition of external agendas.
• A track record of leading complex, multi-workstream programme portfolios, managing multiple teams, funders, and delivery contexts simultaneously with rigour and care.
• A strong track record of managing large, distributed teams, including setting up the systems needed to allocate people well across multiple projects.
• Experience working closely with technical experts, such as technical leads or advisors, to translate technical excellence into high-quality delivery.
• A track record of improving operational delivery: spotting inefficiencies, building standard operating procedures, and embedding learning across projects.
• Strong strategic judgement, able to prioritise across a broad and varied portfolio.
• Experience working at, or preparing materials for, senior leadership or board level.
• A track record of securing major funding for education programmes, including building and managing relationships with key funders and leading the development of successful proposals.
• A genuine commitment to GSF’s mission and values.

 Desirable

• Direct experience of programme implementation in foundational literacy and numeracy or early years programming (including childcare and ECED) in low-resource or emergency-affected contexts.
• Experience in a membership or network organisation.
• Experience of AI in education, either in programme design and delivery or in understanding how AI tools can strengthen organisational effectiveness 

 Terms and Conditions 
 
Location
GSF is a fully remote organisation. We welcome applications from the UK, where we are headquartered, and the global south where we work, with a preference for candidates within a time zone of GMT-2 to GMT+5:30. Local work authorisation in your country of residence is required. Please note that we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. 
Some international travel may be required. 
 
 
Salary  
GSF uses location-based salary bands to ensure fair and equitable pay across regions. Our baseline compensation is anchored to the UK market salary range. As we hire globally, your final offer will be adjusted to reflect local market data of your country of residence. 
 
Examples of localised salary expectations for this role: 
 
United Kingdom £80,080 – £86,320 
Kenya* £60,060—£64,740 
India* INR 7,095,922 – INR7,645,157 
*The final package will include health insurance 
 
Contract: Permanent 
Hours: Full Time, typically 9am-5pm in your time zone, but with significant flexibility. Given that we work across different time zones, some non-traditional hours for early or late calls may be required. 
Responsible to: CEO 
Responsible for: Two Associate Directors, one manager 
Anticipated Start Date:  As soon as possible, subject to any notice periods. 
 
 
Our Benefits Include: 
A senior leadership role with genuine impact shaping the infrastructure of a global, mission-driven organisation. 
35 fully flexible holiday days (including flexible national holidays) increasing with tenure, and generous family-friendly policies. 
Generous employee pension scheme. 
Flexible working options. 
Co-working space allowance. 
Personal learning and development budget. 
Access to GSF events. 
Access to the learning platform iHasco. 
Annual team retreat. 
 
 
How to Apply 
Applications are to be submitted through Global Schools Forum recruitment portable Apply Here upload your CV and a supporting statement setting out how your skills and experience match the criteria for this role (max of two pages.) 
Recruitment Process:  
Application Deadline: We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis and may close this vacancy early if we find the right candidate, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. The application deadline is Friday 6th November. Interviews will be scheduled on a rolling basis. 
 
We are committed to inclusive recruitment and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Please email info@globalschoolsforum.org to let us know how we can help. 
If you apply, we will process your personal data for recruitment purposes only and in accordance with our Data Privacy Policy.  
Please note that we accept applications from those who have the right to work in their country of residency, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. 
 
Equal Opportunities 
GSF is committed to a fair and inclusive workplace, where everyone can be themselves and thrive. We welcome applications and do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, or marriage and civil partnership.